GNU Common Lisp
GNU Common Lisp (GCL, formerly known as Austin Kyoto Common Lisp) is a
compiler and interpreter for Common Lisp. GCL is very portable and
extremely efficient on a wide class of applications, and compares
favorably in performance with commercial Lisps on several large
theorem--prover and symbolic algebra systems. GCL supports the CLtL1
specification.
Some advantages
- GCL compiles to C and then uses the native optimizing C compiler (e.g.,
GCC), giving great portability.
- Highly efficient. A function call is basically the same speed
as a C function call, in fact identical to a C function call
via a pointer.
- It has a source level Lisp debugger (dbl) for interpreted
code, letting you step a line at a time, while displaying the your
position in an Emacs window. This is invaluable when trying to
understand large systems.
- Has pioneered conservative Garbage Collection schemes.
- Also has a garbage collection scheme, for only recent allocations,
based on native page fault handling. This is the stratified garbage
collection (SGC).
- Very reliable. People have huge chip verification suites which
run for extended periods. I have had computations which ran for weeks.
There are no leaks.
- Very fast. I have numerous users who claim their code runs two times
under GCL, than in competitive lisps.
- New features such as fast regexp matching (using my new algorithm).
- Socket code is being added.
- A new Windows 95 port is in progress.
- Can be used in commercial applications, since covered by the
Gnu library license, which permits you to distribute a system including
GCL, as long as you distribute your binary .o files as well.
- built in interface to Tk widget system. Allows a mixture
of tcl and common lisp to be used in a user interface--your choice
which you use.
- Special permission can be given for other commercial applications.
- Support available from the developer.
Go here to download the source (good for unix), and a linux compiled version.
The source is now under cvs and you can download various versions,
including any changes.
William F. Schelter